A few weeks ago we acquired an orphan billy goat. We keep a small herd of Boer Goats. Currently we have a few females and one wether (non-breeding male) and have been planning to get another billy goat to breed the females this year. Our goats (thankfully) do not fulfill the goat stereotype and jump on cars, eat paint and generally terrorize the property. Boot City has a LOT of cars around so it is a blessing that our goats aren’t destructive (Sterling the horse takes the cake there, but that is another post).

A friend of ours has some female Boers who are in the midst of kidding. Sadly, the first doe to kid died a few days later from a freak infection. It was a very uncommon and not communicable disease that took her life about a week after kidding twin boys. The boys were bottle fed for a few days before our friend decided the kids needed to move to homes with more time resources to care for them. We’ve bottle fed a few goats in the past few years and I bottle fed sheep and calves when I was a kid so we volunteered to take one of the boys. The other went to another friend so we are able to keep tabs on the brothers.

This is a photo of them the day they went to their new homes. The “red” head is Bullet and the black head was “Bingo”. I’ll explain his name change in a minute.

They were born in late January and, even in Texas, the weather can make it MUCH harder to care for baby animals. We brought “Bingo” home on a Saturday afternoon in February when the temps were climbing into the 60s and by Sunday night it was back to freezing and ice. So, he moved to the house to be near a heater and come to think he’s a fox hound. We kept him in our breezeway with a heater for about a week until temps climbed back up to the 50s and 60s and he could be back with his goat friends. Animals kept with humans when they are babies are a LOT harder to deal with as adults than those reared by their own kind so we wanted him to be with the other goats as much as possible.

The more time we’ve spent with the little guy the less his name seemed to fit him. Boot City has a thing for horrible 70’s and 80’s TV shows and Sanford and Son is his absolute favorite. He’s been working at home a lot lately thus watching an inordinate amount of Sanford and Son…..one thing led to another and our baby goat has become “Lamont”. The “Son” of Sanford and Son. Our Lamont was a little slow on the uptick to really get the hang of the bottle after moving to our house (evidently he did fine before the move, but oftentimes big changes can hinder baby animals). This was how how earned his name. Fred Sanford always called his son a “dummy”.

No worries, he eats JUST FINE now! He’s also taken to grazing on grass in his pen and eating pelleted goat feed and alfalfa. The earlier orphaned goats eat like adults, the more likely they are to develop normally. He still loves his bottle, he gets two a day, but he’s growing rapidly! So, that is the story of our orphaned goat. Check back for updates as Lamont grows to become a magnificent Billy goat and the father of lots of kids